“THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK”
“He hath made the earth by His power, He hath established the
world by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by His
discretion.”
(+Jeremiah.+)
Godfrey was a kind of gentleman visitor, free to work or not as he
chose. His work had been done in being the means of providing the
net, and he was enjoying a well-earned repose after the assiduous
toil of the past two years. At the same time he could not be idle and
had insisted on taking his share of work, to which he devoted himself
with all his energies, and after some hours of close application he
found himself with a little time to spare and was strolling about
promiscuously, glancing at anything and everything, when he came upon
the chief geologist, Raymond Sorrel, who was looking out of a window
intently watching the ‘flames’ which were shooting past them with a
terrific roar and, knowing he was always ready to talk on his pet
subject, and was never so happy as when he had a good listener who
would not interrupt, Godfrey thought he could not do better than spend
an hour or so with the great man whose knowledge was so profound, and
obtain some information on certain subjects about which he had thought
very little, so he sauntered up and casually remarked, “I fear most of
my bacilli would get frizzled in that furnace, Sorrel.”
“Without doubt, Spenser!” responded Sorrel, smiling. “I do not suppose
you ever thought to rear fire-proof-spinning insects, any more than I
imagined it would ever be my good fortune to come to the sun—even now I
can scarcely realise it!”
“I am ashamed to say I am almost ignorant of astronomical matters and
everything else except my grubs and electricity—my _métier_ is _really_
electricity, but fate placed me amongst grubs, so I suppose I shall be
with them as long as I live, and they’ll be with me after, unless we
get cremated here—and until I made my first voyage for the Jovian bug
with my friends, I scarcely knew one star from another.”
“We cannot be everything,” replied Sorrel, laughing. “I knew little
about natural history till you explained to me the habits of those most
interesting creatures to which we owe our presence here and our safety
from that!” and he pointed outside.
“What an awful sight it is!” said Godfrey. “It makes one realise what a
wonderful and holy thing creation is.”
“Indeed it does! and the Bible, despite the attacks made on it, still
stands true in its references to science.”
“Really!” responded Godfrey; “it seems to be a growing belief that the
Bible story of creation is merely fanciful; very poetic, but untenable
when faced with scientific research.”
“You mean that science and theology are at variance?”
“Certainly!” replied Godfrey; “such is the acknowledged belief
nowadays.”
“Then don’t you believe it, Spenser. Poetical the story may be, with
apparent slight contradictions in places, which are mostly different
writers’ ideas of things, but the broad teaching and general truths
are actually proved by scientific fact to be founded on a rock, and
impregnable. Science confirms the truth of the Bible, and in like
manner the Bible proves scientific facts to be facts.”
“But take the story of creation, for instance,” persisted Godfrey;
“science cannot surely support the Bible-sequence of the events in the
creation.”
“Why not? To me it does.”
“Because if the story is to be believed, the earth had light and
darkness, day and night, long before the sun and moon were created, and
yet we depend on both for light.”
“Certainly, but what about the luminiferous ether, which can both
convey and absorb healthy light, the _ignis fatuus_, and other
well-known chemical phenomena which could give a form of light (though
not healthy to us, but man was not then created), for ages before the
formation of the sun, and the sun was certainly created long after our
Earth because it is younger, being yet in its infancy, notwithstanding
the old belief which is held even now by many eminent scientists,
that the sun is the parent of the whole of the solar system. Besides,
Spenser, if you give this matter but a moment’s thought, you will see
how untenable is the argument that light emanates _only_ from the sun,
for there are seen certain stars which are not suns and, so far as
we can see, these have no ruling suns; if they had, our lenses would
show them; but granted they have, the suns, to be out of reach of our
glasses, must be so far away that their light could not reach these
particular stars visible to us, which ought, therefore, to be dark and
invisible. And if it had reached them and illumined them, the chances
are the time is so long past that these suns do not now exist, and we
see but the light of a bygone time, which no doubt in many instances is
the case.
“Again, to bring the argument nearer home, to our own system,
Mercury is nearest the sun, at a distance of but 36 million miles,
or thereabouts, and in order of distance follow Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, etc., the most distant measured
being Neptune at 2794 million miles away—there are many others of
equal bulk further off still, but these will answer my purpose;—now
if the planets, and the stars that are not suns _cannot_ give their
own light, what lights them? And again, if these members of our system
are _entirely_ dependent on this governing sun for every particle of
their light, it would naturally follow that Mercury, being nearest the
sun, would be brightest, and then the others in proportion to their
distance; but we have the second star, Venus, as the brightest star
in the whole system; the next brightest is not Earth, as we should
expect (for we saw in coming that Mars, who is distant from the sun
over half as far again as is Earth, was considerably brighter than
Earth), but Jupiter, the _fifth_ in point of distance; yet Jupiter,
from a scientific and theoretical point of view, can only receive about
twenty-five or twenty-six times _less_ light from the sun than do we
on Earth; Saturn over eighty times less, Uranus a shade over a three
hundred and sixtieth part, and Neptune barely a one-thousandth part of
Earth-light and -heat!
“Many theories have been propounded to account for this, the most
popular being that the differences in lighting are merely those of
atmosphere. That, however, will not bear argument, because modern
science has proved positively what has been for ages asserted—that we
can live on Mars and Venus, and so far as atmosphere goes we could
live on Mercury; yet if the argument is to stand we should be burnt
up on Venus and roasted alive on Mercury, which is so near the great
heat of the sun that it should itself be a star, a subsidiary red-hot
sun. To carry the same argument further, we ought not to be able to
see Neptune at all, considering his great distance and the little
light he receives from our sun, for if he depended on that alone, he
would be quite invisible to us. And to take it still further, to the
planets discovered far beyond the orbit of Neptune and yet undoubtedly
belonging to our system: how did they get there? and why were they
not noticed, as belonging to our system, before the nineteenth to
twenty-first centuries. If flung from our sun ages before, they would
have wrecked the whole system, being great masses of energising matter,
and at their enormous distances they cannot possibly receive any
appreciable light from the sun, which will be but a star to them. Yet
we can see them plainly, when by the very argument brought forward, of
the sun being sole light-giver, they should be black and altogether
invisible. No, Spenser, they must have been attracted and are now kept
within the sun’s mighty influence by his power, but receive not his
light.
“Many other theories, besides those relating to the atmosphere, have
been brought forward to account for various degrees of illumination of
our own planets and of other heavenly bodies, but none are satisfactory
except the one admitting that each world, star, planet, comet, or other
heavenly body is, to a great extent, self-luminous; be it solid, hot or
cold, watery, vaporous, molten, or of any other substance.
“Now, to prove to you how true is the story of creation as related
in the Bible, let us take the version step by step and see how it
harmonises with, or refutes, known scientific facts, for I want to
convince you that the Bible, in its scientific statements, will repel
any attacks on its veracity.”
“Well, I have an open mind on the subject, Sorrel,” replied Godfrey;
“it seems to me that it is not irrelevant to discuss these most
interesting matters under the present circumstances.”
Sorrel then resumed,—
“At the first chapter in the Bible we have ‘In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth,’ at a period in the dim past, some
millions of years ago, when perhaps, from a primary ‘something’ there
was formed a world which gradually solidified, and there came a time
when the azoic rocks were established; this was, roughly speaking,
about 49,600 feet below the present surface of the Earth, and in these,
as the name implies, exists no trace of organic life. At this time
‘the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face
of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,’
causing to spring into being molluscs without sight, and very low forms
of phytozoa and radiata, the fossils of which are found in the next
bed above these azoic rocks, the bed being about 16,600 feet thick, or
about 33,000 feet below the present surface. Of these shells, limestone
and other substances necessary to later periods were made, and during
the countless ages that passed whilst this great deposit, designated
the Cambrian Period, was being formed, darkness brooded over the
waters, as the Spirit of God caused these low forms of life to spring
into existence and to die, in order that their remains might prepare
the Earth for further races. Then ‘God said, Let there be light: and
there was light,’ and in the waters there came a new race of beings
with eyes—which had not been necessary previously—trilobites, and many
other strange and wonderful creatures.
“Then the Bible goes on to say ‘And God saw the light, that it
was good,’ and so it was, for it was life-giving, and was also
accomplishing His purpose. ‘And God divided the light from the
darkness. And God called the light Day and the darkness he called
Night’—and for the first time there was ‘evening and morning.’ As
yet there was no mention of a sun; the earth _itself_ had become
light-giving, and day dawned and faded into night without any solar
aid, for over all the earth there were thick and impenetrable mists
which excluded all exterior light, if any existed, and precluded all
life save that which was capable of existing in water, and necessarily
of the most lowly form. Then we find a further development, for after
these ages had passed, the Creator commences a new phase—‘And God
said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it
divide the waters from the waters,’ and at His creative fiat the damp
and heavy mists arose and, taking the form of clouds, floated upwards.
‘And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under
the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it
was so’—and from that time humid clouds began to separate from the
watery world, and between the two there lay a depth of atmospheric
space stirred by life-giving winds, the open air and winds cleansing
and purifying the seas, and then there followed the call into being of
creatures which required air for existence.”
“And is all this your own theory, or based on proof?” interrupted
Godfrey.
“Absolute proof, Spenser! indisputable proof from actual fossils and
the geological structure of the earth.”
As Godfrey remained silent, Sorrel continued his story,—“In course of
time there then followed the appearance of dry land above the waters,
for the capillary action of the atmosphere between the water and
the clouds reduced the quantity of water and the absorption of the
under-land would do the same, whilst in many places the moisture would
reach the internal heat and volcanic eruptions would occur; these would
also be brought about by the gradual gathering of gases and in many
other ways, and the earth, by its upheavals, would be disturbed and
tilted upwards and so give the seas and oceans limits which they could
not pass, thus dividing land from water, this being what is known as
the Devonian period.
“After these had all done their work, and insects had formed islands
and the ground had become adapted for growth, God said, ‘Let the
earth bring forth grass, the herb _yielding_ seed, and the fruit-tree
_yielding_ fruit after his kind, _whose seed is in itself_, upon the
earth: and it was so.’ This, to my mind, Spenser, is a direct Creation,
not evolution—a creation of everything first, and _then_ evolution, and
varieties caused by adaptations to surroundings.”
“It quite agrees with what I have proved in my researches in natural
history,” observed Godfrey, “for I have found that each species of
animals keeps to itself, and the different species never, under any
circumstances, mix in their natural state. For instance, the wild ass
will never mate with the zebra, or the zebra with the horse; it is only
under the influence of man that these race-distinctions are diverted,
and, given the first creation, there follows natural adaptation,
selection, and variety, in the same species according to surroundings
in consequent succession.”
“Just so,” assented Sorrel. “The first vegetable creation, according
to scripture, is ‘the herb yielding seed’—or seed-pod—‘and the
fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself’—so
that ever afterwards the fruit of the tree produces its own seed and
no further ‘creation’ is necessary, it being from that time a question
of repetition and evolution. ‘And it was so,’ for vegetation became
luxuriant in the extreme, from which reason that period is called the
Carboniferous era.
“In due time all this wealth of vegetation cleared the atmosphere and
brightened the clouds, and when the time was ripe, there followed
the next scheme which, as in the case of all the other phases, came
slowly, without any line of demarcation, one period being gradually and
imperceptibly blended with the next. So that the succeeding phase, the
creation of the starry firmament, would also come about slowly; the
luxuriant vegetation would clear the sky, and the stars beyond would
become visible in consequence. This creation of the stars, therefore,
can only mean that those already existing became _visible_ for the
first time through the gradually clearing sky—for it is not tenable
to suppose, even for a moment, that all the stars and celestial bodies
were created for _our_ special benefit; the benefit of pleasure or
instruction of the few people on earth who seriously study the science
of astronomy, considering that myriads of these stars are millions of
years older than Earth is now. Of course, seeing that man was not yet
created, this influx of light could only be for the immediate benefit
of the animals and vegetation then existing, in order that the world
might be prepared for the succeeding life of all forms, and there comes
another wonderful creation which may have been sudden. A sun is formed
and begins to shine on the Earth, and the moon Luna, probably being
already there—for she is older than the Earth, or, at any rate, older
in her life—but dark, that is, merely luminous like some of the stars,
receives the full blaze of the sunlight also, and our Earth, from
its position, is illumined by the reflecting moon. And God made ‘the
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night:
he made the stars also’—thus came the completion, or the formation, of
many of the stars, some of which might probably mean certain of our own
planets, considering that several are younger than Earth, or possibly
some of the actual stars or suns of other systems.
“Then commenced another epoch in Earth-history, and one, if anything,
even more wonderful than those previous. For ages there had been light,
but only the light which every world gives out from itself, as in the
case of certain stars which are not suns and on which no sun ever
shines, yet which are seen shining by their own light and lighting
other worlds, as they do Earth to a great extent, quite apart from the
light of our sun and moons, as I have already explained in detail. But
the rays of the newly created sun warmed and penetrated the sombre haze
which had hitherto surrounded the Earth, till at last all opposition
was destroyed and the vivifying rays and heat reached the ground,
warming land, water and air, and causing more violent circulation of
the atmosphere, and making certain portions of varying temperature.
The winds, therefore, became fresher and stronger, and the sun ever
after became the visible and physical ruler of Earth and all the other
planets which were, or had been, drawn within his force of energy.
“This is, of course, taking my belief that the sun was made _after_
the Earth, which belief I base on excellent and irrefutable grounds,
though it is contrary to the opinion held by many great scientists,
as I before remarked. You will see how strong is the basis of my
theory from the fact that the Earth is proved to be certainly not less
than one hundred and thirty million years old by the fossils on it,
its structure, and the progress of its life, and even the greatest
estimation of the age of the sun, as a sun, is that it _cannot_ be more
than fifteen and a half million years. How is it possible, then, for
the Earth to have come from the sun’s mass, either in the solid or in
any other form?
“Then followed the creative word—‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly
the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the
earth in the open firmament of heaven,’ and the Reptile Age was formed,
when sea-animals, reptiles and winged saurians existed.
“Then came the Tertiary period, the age of mammoths, with all kinds of
animals _except man_. The fossils of these are found at a depth of from
two hundred to two thousand feet below the present surface. Many noted
scientists positively assert that there lived at this period human
beings of a very primitive type, and say the order given in the Bible
is out of place, but I cannot agree with them, for no remains of man
have ever been found to exist with these, and it is but reasonable to
suppose that considering his bones are of similar substance to those of
other animals and of fishes, _his_ remains could not have completely
vanished while theirs have been left to fossilise. As a matter of
fact, no _human_ fossils, bones, implements, or indeed any other human
relics are, or ever have been, found lower than two hundred feet below
the present surface. The argument, therefore, is entirely in favour of
the Bible sequence of events—for man to be uncreated at this period.
“But after all these (to man) harmful creatures had died off, their
places in the ordinary course being taken by others more suited to
the quieter time, and over which man could have rule, _then_, and not
before, was man created and given dominion over every living and moving
thing—which brings us to the present era, when man, as a race, has for
a time power to subdue the whole of the vegetable and animal creation,
and according to the manner in which the privilege is used, so will
posterity and the future of the world suffer, or benefit.”
“Then you believe the Bible story absolutely as written?” said Godfrey,
much impressed.
“How can I do otherwise, when I can only prove its correctness, search
as I may to find it faulty?” replied Sorrel, with fervour. “I do
believe the story most assuredly, as certainly as I believe that this
sun will be peopled in time as Earth is now.”
“You really believe that, Sorrel!” asked Godfrey. “Tell me how, for I
have never considered the question of creation in so serious an aspect
before. If these changes come gradually, what causes them?”
“The Creator, Spenser,” replied Sorrel, reverently, “by first of all
creating a certain law which, by means of cause and effect, works
itself out _ad infinitum_. Without going over the ground again, I will
tell you how from every effect giving rise to a later effect, the
Creator’s Wonderful Will and Power are worked out. Take this sun; in
time the mass will cool to such an extent that the internal heat will
not burst through it, and a crust will form; as this becomes thicker,
it will, on the outside, turn from white to black till it is almost
cold. This coolness will cause these heavy, hot vapours above to
condense and the ground will be covered with water, making it a watery
world. The heavy, black, grit-laden clouds above will cause general
darkness. Then will come a repetition of the creation of Earth, with
which I will not trouble you again in its Biblical sense—the clouds
will clear by precipitating their solid matter on the water, where it
will sink, to form muddy ooze and the like at the bed. This deposit
will lighten the clouds and there will be light—the light of a star
unlit by a sun. In time, all the solid matter will have left the clouds
which, relieved of their weight, will rise and an atmosphere will form
below them, and, being in circulation, will cause winds which, in turn,
will disperse the deadly gases and cause the water to have motion,
which will purify it, and in the mud molluscs will grow, and the deadly
gases above will be destroyed by combining, some with air, others
with water, and others with land, so that there will be a healthy,
breathable atmosphere through which the stars will be seen, and period
follows period as I have just stated, till this present sun has become
another world, even like Earth.”
“And what about the present solar system,—where will it be then?”
“Probably revolving round some other sun. There would be a time, long
in the past, when each of the planets was in some other part of the
universe, each as a sun, the centre of its own system, but as time
passed, and the violent energy gave place to the cooler and quieter
energy of inhabited worlds, some other world, expending its new-formed
energy in visible heat, by a coalescence with one or more others,
became this present sun, and, powerful in its youthful and terrible
energy, which was more assertive than that of any of the planets near,
drew them within the circle of its influence, and itself became the
centre and ruler round which these planets must revolve until such
times as its energy has no longer the power to retain them, when the
next strongest will take up the tale and probably cause new suns and
moons to form.”
“How could a sun form,—by impact?”
“Yes, but I think that scarcely likely, for I have often experimented
with motes in a sunbeam. If these are agitated in vacuum, they rise and
fall and float around but never collide. At least I have never been
able to cause any to do so; many draw near to each other, but long
before they get sufficiently near to touch, they fly off horizontally
and fall. So long as they float in space they will not collide; only
is it possible for them to do so when they reach the fixed point to
which they have been drawn. The motes will rest upon one another when
they have reached the lowest part to which gravity has drawn them, but
so long as they are above that part, I cannot cause them to collide,
no matter to what agitation they are subjected. They float and dart
here and there in the sunbeam as separate units—stars if you like—each
avoiding contact with its neighbour, though the sizes are unequal.”
“Then how could a sun form? I could understand the worlds separating if
all the forces are equal, for in that case one would repel the other,
but if they cannot collide, how can they form a sun by coalescence?”
“Though two worlds could not collide accidentally in space, one could
draw the other to its own surface, if powerful enough to do so, the
impact causing such heat as to liquefy both.”
“Is not that the same thing as colliding in space?” asked Godfrey,
dubiously. “I must confess I see no difference.”
“No, not at all,” said Sorrel, smiling, “I will illustrate the point
by a simple experiment I have often used to prove this very question to
my own satisfaction.
“If you take two revolvers exactly alike, firing the old-fashioned lead
bullets, and so place and fix them that when fired their respective
bullets will traverse the same line exactly, at the end of which is an
iron-plate target, and arrange for them to be fired simultaneously,
one would be inclined to think that the instant the bullet has left
the end of the one barrel, it will strike and coalesce with that from
the other barrel and travel along the same line as a single globule
of molten lead, striking the target as one, for only one splash will
be seen. If now, the experiment is repeated and arrangements made by
which the bullet shall be photographed during the whole of its flight,
you will find that both bullets leave simultaneously and approach
each other instantly, but instead of colliding, they then _separate_,
and travel together to the target side by side, but the instant they
reach the iron plate—a mere breath before impact on it—they coalesce,
and the actual impact on the plate takes place as one drop composed
of two bullets _already_ united, their union causing them to expend
their energy in coalescence into a single globule of liquid lead. If
you now increase or diminish the distance by placing the plate further
back, or drawing it nearer, the result is the same. The bullets will
not coalesce till the actual destination is reached, but will repel
one another from the straight line till that time, though they are but
a breath apart—from which we may infer that heavenly bodies cannot
collide, but must be drawn definitely and irresistibly by some more
powerful agency to the actual surface of another world before a union
is possible, like a comet flying into the sun.”
“In the case of the bullet experiment,” said Godfrey, “if one followed
the other, the latter at greater speed, it would overtake and absorb
the former?”
“Naturally, for its energy would be the greater.”
“And if one went immediately behind the other, almost touching, I
suppose there would be two impacts on the target; one would not hasten
or retard the other?”
“There would be a slight influence, but not an appreciable one; there
would be two impacts on the plate, in rapid succession, the first,
naturally, striking the plate before that which followed.”
“Are there other ways in which suns could be formed, without the energy
called into being by the shock of contact?”
“Certainly, there are many ways; perhaps the quickest and most
effective to Earth-minds would be the sudden withdrawal from the
atmosphere of, say, our world, our own Earth, of every trace of
nitrogen. The air then being all oxygen, without any nitrogen to
restrain it, would cause the whole world to catch fire; as the Bible
says, ‘The elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and
the works that are therein, shall be burned up’; everything would
instantly catch fire; the water, seas, rocks, earth, and sky would
become a molten mass of liquid fire—a fresh sun, full of the terrible
energy of its own combustion; and in our blazing atmosphere and flaming
clouds the people on other worlds would see exactly the same awful
combustion as we are watching now. And our Earth, formed into a new
sun, would probably still revolve round this sun, if his greater bulk
and attraction had not then diminished, and would itself be the centre
of a new system by reason of its energy attracting other planets, and
causing them to form a new orbit round it.
“Such an inevitable result would follow the simple withdrawal from
Earth of such a deadly gas as nitrogen, which by a loving Creator
has been made to temper its exactly opposite energising gas, oxygen,
the addition of but one-fifth of which, as you know, is sufficient
to turn the death-dealing four-fifths of nitrogen into our glorious,
life-sustaining atmosphere, that is, of course, eliminating the small
quantity of argon present (which is rather less than 1 per cent. of
the atmosphere’s volume) and the carbon di-oxide and aqueous vapour.
There is thus but a breath between life and an awful, agonising, though
rapid, death.”
Godfrey, deeply impressed, stood musing and looking out into the
flaming sea around them, when just as he turned to Sorrel to ask
a question, there was heard a report in the laboratory, and crash
after crash followed in swift succession as something hard could be
heard striking the metallic walls there, and then came the sound of
shattering glass.